Less challenging timewise at one hour and 50 minutes, the program of Best Live Action Short nominees will be screened beginning at 2 p.m. on Saturday, February 16 and at 7:15 p.m. on Saturday, February 23. The titles include the South African film Asad, by Bryan Buckley: a “coming-of-age fable” about a Somali boy faced with the career choice of becoming a fisherman or a pirate. Two youngsters bond in Kabul in the Argentina/US entry Buzkashi Boys by Sam French. Buzkashi, we are told, is Afghanistan’s national sport, “a brutal game of horse polo played with a dead goat.” In Shawn Christensen’s Curfew, “At the lowest point of his life, Richie gets a call from his estranged sister, asking him to look after his 9-year-old niece Sophia for the evening.”
Tom Van Avermaet directed the Belgian/French entry Death of a Shadow, a dark fantasy about a dead World War I soldier who gets a chance at a second existence from a mysterious personage who collects people’s shadows. Finally, there’s Henry by the Canadian Yan England, in which “a great concert pianist has his life thrown in turmoil the day the love of his life, Maria, disappears mysteriously.”
Animation fans get two chances to view the program of Best Animated Short nominees: at 11 a.m. on both Saturdays, February 16 and 23. It runs one hour and ten minutes, beginning with Englishman Timothy Reckart’s entry, Head over Heels. It’s a moody and touching claymation tale of a middle-aged married couple who have grown apart; their alienation is symbolized by the fact that he lives on the floor of their house and she on the ceiling. Fans of The Simpsons will cheer for David Silverman’s The Longest Day Care, in which wee Maggie has a lousy first day at the Ayn Rand Day Care Center. The animation is crudely cartoony, as one would expect from this series, but there’s plenty of visual wit, such as the array of sour-faced Raggedy Ayn dolls provided for the tots’ use.
John Kahrs’s black-and-white drawn animation Paperman is a sweet tale of love at first sight in a big city and a lonely man’s attempts at courtship via paper airplane. The shortest but funniest entry is Adam Pesapane’s stop-motion effort Fresh Guacamole, which shows us how to make guacamole using a hand grenade for an avocado, a softball for an onion, a pincushion for a tomato and a golfball for a lime – and don’t forget the poker chips!
Longest and most aesthetically ambitious is Minkyu Lee’s Adam and Dog, which shows us the Garden of Eden from the perspective of the first dog and how the game of fetch-the-stick got invented. In places the backgrounds are as luminous and detailed as a Studio Ghibli film – though it is a relief to find, when the first humans finally enter the story, that they don’t have huge-eyed, pointy-nosed anime-style faces. The total program of nominees is brief enough to be fleshed out with three additional award-winning animated short films: Abiogenesis, Dripped and The Gruffalo’s Child.
Admission to each of the short film programs costs $7 for the general public, $5 if you’re a Rosendale Theatre Collective member. And if you’re chafing more over the fact that you missed too many of this year’s Oscar-nominated features, the Rosendale is about to give you a second chance with the following evening screenings:
Anna Karenina from Friday, February 8 to Monday, February 11, and again on Thursday the 14th
Lincoln from Friday, February 15 to Monday, February 18 and again on Thursday the 21st, with a special 2 p.m. matinee, appropriately enough, on Presidents’ Day
Silver Linings Playbook from Friday, March 1 to Monday, March 4 and again on Thursday the 7th
Zero Dark Thirty from Friday, March 8 to Monday, March 11 and again on Thursday the 14th
Hyde Park on Hudson from Friday, March 15 to Monday, March 18
Amour on Thursday and Friday, March 21 and 22
Quartet from Thursday, March 28 to Monday, April 1
See you at the movies!
2013 Oscar-nominated short films: Animated, Saturdays, February 16 & 23, 11 a.m.; Live Action, Saturday, February 16, 2 p.m., Saturday, February 23, 7:15 p.m.; Documentary, Saturday/Sunday, February 23/24, 2 p.m.; $7/$5, Rosendale Theatre, 408 Main Street, Rosendale; (845) 658-8989, https://vimeo.com/58286811, https://rosendaletheatre.org.
